If you’re on the lookout for a fun and festive little gift, here’s an idea: Chap Stick Candy Cane! It’s a new limited edition flavor, just in time for the holidays. It’s perfect little gift to hand out to co-workers, friends, and cousins—just about everyone uses ChapStick anyway. I think the flavor’s just a nice little touch. 🙂 Available at Watson’s and Mercury Drug for a limited time. Grab yours (and your friends’) now!
Here’s a super-quick holiday look that’s been my go-to lately. It’s a great alternative for the deep reds and golds we usually see people put on for the holidays since it features an array of plummy goodness and just a hint of a pretty golden glow. Excuse my face. Like I said earlier, I’ve stopped wearing foundation etc, so all you’ll see today are the color (eyes, cheeks, lips) themselves. 🙂 Prepare for pores! I wanted to do a plum-based look that played with golds, so I did my eye in those colors, and picked a subtle plum lip shade. I paired it with a peachy-pink blush with a bit of golden shimmer, instead of my favorite plummy blush, NARS Sin, because I felt like bringing it to the cheeks might be a bit overkill. I wanted also a glow and a light flush, instead of heavy pigmentation. Eyes: MAC Paint Pot (Rubenesque), bareMinerals A Vision in Velvet Mineral Eyeshadow (Satin Plum and Velvet Vanilla), Shu Uemura x Karl Lagerfeld Painting Liner (Blackish Satin Purple), …
So I’ve come to the end (as of now) of my Holiday 2012 Haul. This is the last product from the new holiday releases that I managed to get. I’ve purchased some items after this one, but I don’t think I got anything from the other holiday releases anymore. (Yet. Hehe.) Anyway! Viva is a NARS lipgloss from their Larger Than Life line, and was also released as part of the Andy Warhol collaboration for Holiday 2012. The Larger Than Life Lipgloss is: Outrageously lustrous color meets high-impact shine. Dramatic, stay-in-place shades glide on smoothly and evenly for lips that are more luminous and voluminous than ever before. High-shine, high-impact finish gives a dramatic effect Long-lasting, stay-in-place wear Infused with ingredients to nourish and fight free radicals while natural lip enhancers pump up volume Shorter-bristle brush delivers the most precise application possible I think it’s a different formula from their normal (?) glosses, but I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, I do love the formulation, especially coming from a place where I detested glosses. It’s a …
Last Saturday marked my first Softly Sometimes-related event, the Zen Zest Diva Off! Thank you to Zen Zest and Liz of Project Vanity for the invite! I was surprised but also really, really happy when I got it, since I’m so new to this “scene” of blogging. Here’s to more, hopefully! Before the Divas belted their way to victory, the Zen Zest team first introduced their line of Holiday Gift Sets. Melai of Style and Soul hosted the event, while firing off some questions for brand ambassador, Divine Lee, to answer. Sometimes, I really do have a hard time thinking of what to give some of my friends and relatives gifts that they’d appreciate but that will also fit my budget. Contrary to how spendy my nature may seem to the peoples of the Internet, I do think of all my purchases and Google reviews to the point of obsession before I flush my money down the toilet buy anything. While Divine talked about her personal experience with Zen Zest, I checked some of their …
One of my personal favorite Holiday 2012 Collections has been Shu Uemura’s collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld. I’ve reviewed part of my haul already (see: Prestigious Bordeaux Eye and Cheek Palette, Blackish Satin Purple Painting Liner), but now here’s a look at the three out of the four lipsticks I managed to snag. I got Celebrity Beige and Luxe Burgundy, while my beautiful sister Isabel got Mon Shu Red. Before all of the swatches and samples, I think we ought to take a moment to fawn over this limited edition collection’s super cute packaging. Is it annoying if I call it kawaii? Because it totally is. The top half, where the transparent cap goes, has the Shu Uemura logo on its silver body, with a bunch of red dots circling the perimeter. I love Shu Uemura’s transparent caps on lipsticks because it’s very very easy to tell what lipstick you’re reaching for with just one look. As for the bottom half… It’s Mon Shu Girl, the red-eyed wonder! I know some people (namely those who don’t …
Here’s a closeup of my “new discovery” in this post. I’d gotten bareMinerals’ A Vision in Velvet without prior knowledge as to how to apply and work with mineral shadows. As a result, I was met with a disastrous first impression. However, with my faith in this product renewed by the awesomeness of a layer of MAC Paint Pot in Rubenesque all over my lid, I set out to try out some more combinations. After all, the thing comes in twenty shades. My eyes glazed over as I tried to come up with the permutations for those colors. As was mentioned, the first look (above) is just the Rubenesque Paint Pot all over the lid, with Satin Plum on the crease and the inner and outer corners. Pretty. It’s pretty subtle, too, with the shimmers visible only up close. Here, I just swiped Velvet Violet over the center of a lid, for an overall purple-y look. It’s a little less warm and a little more intense (for some reason?). Next, I started with a clean …
I dropped by the NARS counter yesterday and took a few quick swatches of their holiday collection, which is a collaboration with Andy Warhol. Sarie asked Robbie, the SA, to hold an Edie Set for me, but I wanted to look at some of the other products, too. The sets are rather pretty. The two collections that are not exclusive to Sephora seem to be available here, except for the polishes. TV Party, an orange shade, is the only individual polish that seems to be available in Manila. The Larger Than Life Lipglosses (Php 1450) are the first ones I swatched. In order, from the top: Viva, Penny Arcade, International Velvet, Candy Says, and Holly Woodlawn. The formulation is rather nice, though sticky. I was turned off by gloss a few years ago, and this is the first one I’ve tried—and liked—since “going off” of glosses. The Soft Touch Shadow Pencils are a tricky subject, something I’m willing to try, but perhaps not right now. Top to bottom, Calabria (not part of this collection, but …
Softly Sometimes 